"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the
animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel
nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest
lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."
Samuel Adams, (1722-1803)

Sunday, July 08, 2012

Florida accused of concealing worst tuberculosis outbreak in 20 years

The state of Florida has been struggling
for months with what the Centers for Disease Control describe as the
worst tuberculosis outbreak in the United States in twenty years.

Although a CDC report went out to state health officials in April
encouraging them to take concerted action, the warning went largely
unnoticed and nothing has been done. The public did not even learn of
the outbreak until June, after a man with an active case of TB was
spotted in a Jacksonville soup kitchen.

The Palm Beach Post has managed to obtain records on the
outbreak and the CDC report, though only after weeks of repeated
requests. These documents should have been freely available under
Florida’s Sunshine Law.

According to the Post,
the coverup began as early as last February, “when Duval County Health
Department officials felt so overwhelmed by the sudden spike in
tuberculosis that they asked the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention to become involved. Believing the outbreak affected only
their underclass, the health officials made a conscious decision not to
not tell the public, repeating a decision they had made in 2008, when
the same strain had appeared in an assisted living home for people with
schizophrenia.”

That decision now appears to have gone terribly awry, partly because
the disease appears to have already spread into the general population
but also because just nine days before the CDC warning was issued,
Florida Governor Rick Scott had signed a bill downsizing the state’s
Department of Health and closing the A.G. Holley State Hospital that had
treated the most difficult tuberculosis cases for over 60 years............................